Did you know Louis C.K.'s real last name, Szekely, is pronounced "see kay," and that's why he goes by C.K.?

This is bringing back memories of a language a friend of mine started in like '88, where everything's spelled out phonetically, in lower case, but anything that sounds like a letter is represented by that letter, capitalized. A bonus is that numbers are used if anything sounds like a number. Examples: California = kala4nya, Seattle = Catl, tempeh = tMpA. Have I brought this up before?

O's @ Sox, right about now. Lackey pitches, and something close to the real starting lineup...bats.

3:01: John "Peter Brady" Lackey was good--4 innings, one hit. Youk, Drew, Craw with RBIs, we lead 4-3 in the 7th.

3:56: We win walk-off style, as Yamaico Navarro knocks in the winning run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

Two years ago my good friend and mentor Tobias showed you pics from abandoned Lincoln Park amusement park. Now Kim and I--I mean Tobias--has gone to another relic, Rocky Point Park here in Rhode Island. Here are the pics I, I mean what's his name, took Sunday.
The entrance thing. Can be seen in the back of this shot from 1990.

And here's the turnstile right next to it.

All the land around the park is closed off, but they're supposedly going to be making it into some kind of public nature thing soon. Check out the sweet beach that's been going to waste. (Actually it probably loves not dealing with potato chip wrappers and diapers.) It was nearly 60 degrees today--but on the water, not so much at all.

Along that beach I noticed this crazy house. Turns out it's the boathouse for the Aldrich Mansion, which appeared in Meet Joe Black--which I only care about since my friend was in that scene!

But getting back to the park--I'm guessing this sign said "Midway [& Something] Straight Ahead."

Rocky Point seemed to be very proud of this dinner hall. Check out the movie about the park, You Must Be This Tall.

Had to take a shot of this.

Striped wall at the dinner hall.

More words of wisdom.

Windjammer. That sign is one of the few remaining the way it was, in tact and on a structure--it's behind those bushes which have been liberated from their former state of trimmery. Tobias can vouch for this, as he went through the bushes and tried to tear the letters off.

Okay, I admit this is not as exciting as Lincoln Park because all the rides and things are now piles of rubble. They stood for a while as you can see on the sites I'm linking to, but a few years ago they actually demolished most of the structures. A lot of the big rides exist now in other amusement parks.

More piles o' rubble.

Play Quarter Something....

More piles. The orange circles can be seen in this 1990 shot.

This was the bottom of the carousel. You can see this stars and stripes theme in this old shot.

Bathrooms. You really can go anywhere at this point.

Train tracks.

Hope springs eternal.

And what a party it was.

The ski lift thing.

This mushroom can be seen in the background of this old pic and this one.

We just reached the point where our massive amounts of snow have fully melted around here--except on certain rubble piles.

Such a fire hazard, good thing this guy's keeping watch.

Kitchen sink joke here.

The base of that ski lift.

The Show-Offs sign.

Here's what's left of the gift shop sign. The same sign from back when it was alive can be seen here.

It's like one day they were washing the floors, and then next day everything was in ruins. This is the Pompeii shot I guess.

Here's the main page to a site I've linked a few times above. Look around. It comes with a song!

Neither Kim nor I had ever been to the site of the Station Night Club fire before today. We had Hair Nation on the radio in tribute as we drove toward the place, and as the GPS told us we were .4 miles away, sure enough, a Great White song came on. See it in the video above. Some pics below:

The sign still stands.

I don't know what this little coop is for--I thought maybe it was part of the building that remained or something but probably not since it's right in the middle.

Some people died later at the hospital--the fire was 2/20/03 and the date on the cross at left is 3/6/03, 8 years ago today.

Candles in the shape of a "100" for the number of people that died.

A Duda dong beat us in the eighth, after a Reddong tied it. I only saw those last two innings, but I see two other non-stars had dongs which is nice. Bowden started and didn't do too well I guess.

And the Mets' spring training park doesn't know the Red Sox updated their logo more than 2 years ago. In other words, they're in the majority.

I came across this ad for a city. I've blocked out the name of the place. See if you can guess it. (It's a North American city.)

We've got some apples (peaches?), some casino chips, some oranges, a hat, and palm trees. Put your answers in the comments section.

Also, check this out. Every time you upload a picture to Blogger, it tells you how much of your allotted photo space you've used up. After 7 years of uploading, I finally reached the 90% mark, and I was getting a little nervous. I had a decision to make about how I was going to show you pictures once I ran out of space. Well, I can put that decision on hold for a while, as Blogger is now telling me I've only used 65% of my space. So they changed something...and I'm reaping all the benefits.....

Sox @ Mets, 1:10 p.m., NESN.

Their first home game and this is how they greet us? We'll see if they can spell "Boston" come April.

Dice-K was a little (a lot) off the mark today. Lots and lots of runs given up. 7-0 Marlins in the 4th right now.

Update 2:21: Ooh, more mistakes! Werner's in the booth and says, "I'm looking forward to that Cubs series in May...is it May or June?" DEAD silence. Then a voice whispers "June." Orsillo quickly says "June!" Wrong. It's May. I don't get that. I understand how annoying it is when you're interviewing someone and they throw you off by asking you a question that you might be unprepared for--Eckersley loves to do this to TC: "Uh, ya got that pitcher, what's his name?" But when the question is basic enough for any Red Sox fan to answer, two key members of the Red Sox media, the producers, and one of the team's owners should be able to come up with the answer between them. As of the next inning, no one has corrected what to me is a horrible error but to most people is meaningless.

2:31: In our other split-squad game, we're up 3-1 against the O's in the 5th. Tejeda's still on fire at the plate, and Crawford has two hits. Looks like Aceves pitched well. Still losing big in the NESN game, Wake now in.

3:40: Tejeda knocks in go-ahead run in ninth vs. Balty. He's 3 for 5. NESN squad trails 11-2 in the 8th.

3:50: Fox gives up a homer to Fox! Orioles tie us, 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth of the non-NESN game.

3:57: Kapstein and Drinkwater also seemed to pull a split squad today, as Denis sat behind the plate early in the game, and Jeremy was there at the end. #99 just got a hit.

4:04: O's-Sox tied after 9. Marlins 11, Sox 2.

4:23: O's-Sox: We're ALL winners! 10-inning tie game.

In college I knew this girl with the unfortunate nickname of "Flem." This was right when that second season of Beavis & Butt-head was new, and it was all we watched on TV. One of the videos on there was Danzig's "Mother." So suddenly everybody knew the song, even sorority-types like Flem. (If you're unfamiliar, it's the song my friend Brian sang in the shower.) One day, we were watching videos, and a different version of "Mother" came on than the one Beavis and Butt-head watched. (There was both the original "Mother" and the live "Mother '93.") Flem looked quizzically at this other "Mother" and, sounding suspicious if not scorned, said, "This isn't 'Mother'...."

I don't know what was funnier, that she considered it an inferior "Mother," or that a "normal" girl was familiar enough with the band Danzig to be able to differentiate between its videos. The point is, I felt like Flem tonight--we've all been hearing and reading and seeing stuff about our new superstar Red Sox and our healthy old ones who we missed so much while they were injured last year, we finally get a look at them in action, but..."this isn't Red Sox." Just a bunch of back-ups. And Clay Buchholz.

But it was still great to actually watch Red Sox baseball tonight on TV for the first time in 2011. Nice job by ClayHH shutting down the Yanks. We were shut down by Colon--but, like I said, we had a lineup of basically all subs. Finally Tejeda knocked in a bunch of runs and we got the win. It's always fun to watch Iglesias in the field. On a 6-3 double play he touched the bag, then almost nailed A-Rod in the face with the throw. I say this every spring training, but beating the Yankees never gets old. So I guess saying it never gets old either.

NESN has Saturday's game, too. (MLBNetwork for everybody else.) 1 o'clock-ish. Hopefully we'll see the real "Mother" out there.

That's from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 21st, 1937. That's right, a baseball team consisting solely of one-armed players. I love how their mascot is a three-legged dog! And I like to think that in the top-right picture, the equipment guy is giving the player shit about having one arm, at which point the dude pulls his waistband out and says "yeah, and I got one dick, too!"

This pre-dated Pete Gray's major league debut by a few years.

I can't find too much online about "White's One-Armed Wonders," but I did find this article about a one-armed team (with a cooler name) from the 1990s.

New slogan! The Dodgers have gone away from "DodgerTown" and/or "This is My Town" and have informed us that it is indeed time for Dodger Baseball. Interesting how they chose the singular form of Dodger. I feel like the singular form is how people refer to something if they don't like it. But I'm sure they did it for better flow.

It's now added to the big board. Of slogans. For 2011.

Not much else new--the Jays moved that "Hustle + Heart 2.0" from the sidebar to the top, making it official, in my mind. And the Mets classed up their background.

Red Sox vs. Yanks ON TV tonight!

We're always looking out at the universe for signs of life, but I've got an idea to help anyone who might be out there find us. And I don't mean putting a capsule on the moon with people saying Hi in every language or whatever.

Okay, so we get some giant thing and we wave it in front of the sun in a non-random way. Like Morse code-style. So anyone looking from far away will see this one star (our sun) blinking on and off in an obvious pattern that had to be done by a living creature.

I know what you're thinking: that I'm mildly retarded. But let me answer some of your questions:

1. Yes, I know it takes a long time for light to travel. So we do our little code and then in a few hundred years, see if we get any feedback. At that point it'll be like those old-school chess games people used to play with each other through the mail, but it's better than nothing. Hopefully the creatures that notice our blinking star are relatively close, so we'll get their answer back in hundreds as opposed to thousands of years. (Or maybe they've got spaceships ready to fly, and now they'll know which star to fly toward.)

2. Yes, I know the sun is really big and I can't build a big thing in my back yard that would block it out. But we could build something relatively big that we could put far enough out in space so that it, at the very least, can block out some of the sun's light, from the perspective of someone looking at it from far away. Right? (But if a planet going in front of the sun looks tiny, I guess my mystery object would have to be at least as big a planet....)

Or maybe we could build a giant structure in the shape of a face profile, and put it on the moon so that it would show up if someone was looking at the sun from far away, like a little black dot with a tiny face on its edge going across the light.

Look, I'm just throwin' ideas out there, I'll let the scientists (and Ryan M.) tweak them.

We're *losing* to the Phillies 2-0 in the ninth, with "one.....one goddamn hit?" [Update 3:45: We lose 2-0. After Stolmy gave up 2 early runs, none of our other guys gave up any. Not even soap opera star Blake Maxwell. So there's that.]

Weird, that's two Major League-related things, Vaughn and Doyle. Speaking of that, I wanna know why the tabloids aren't calling Charlie Sheen "Wild Thing"? It would make so much sense. They still call Madonna "the material girl" for no good reason, but Sheen actually HAS lived up to the name of the character he used to play. Every day the Daily News should be saying "Wild Thing Quits Show" and "Wild Thing In Trouble Again," etc. I'm right, right? I Googled it to see if any sites are regularly calling him Wild Thing, but since there are current rumors about a new Major League movie, those stories are all that came up. It's not like it was some obscure character--many people think "Rick Vaughn" as soon as they see Sheen's face. It's not like I'm asking the tabs to call Corey Feldman "Frogg" or Brian Doyle-Murray "Campsite Owner" here....

Saw Jon Richman out in Northampton tonight. I think he may be the musician I've seen play live the most at this point. You know my feelings about him already, so I'll just leave it at "if you are a member of the human race, you would love a Jonathan Richman performance. So go see one." Eh, I'm sure Incubus fans feel the same way about their band, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. I took some pics but as with most concerts, the lights wash the performers' faces right out of the shot. Yes, I'm blaming the venue on my photographic failures.

At our favorite restaurant in Northampton tonight, a woman at a nearby table suddenly yelled out "does anyone have a tampon?" After a few seconds of silence (during which we all hoped against hope that she needed one for any other reason than what its main use is) I said "I don't." Someone else helped her out, at which point she asked (also loudly), "where's the bathroom?" So odd. I didn't think she was someone with mental problems or anything, more like just your average "kinda old but still lives in a hipster town on purpose" type. But eccentricity shouldn't mean saying bathroom stuff really loud in quiet restaurants. (I am talking, of course, about all bathroom stuff, not just female-specific things. I mean, if I suddenly started literally losing my shit in church* or something, I wouldn't stand up and scream "I'm shitting! I'm shitting! Can someone help?" These are legitimate emergencies, but we're living in a society here.... Later the woman went around to each table maniacally asking if anyone has a blue Honda. At which point I re-thought my stance on her mental state.)

I see Lackey did well today and so did Papi. Nice. Thursday we're home against the Phils at 1:05.


*I've only been to churches at weddings and funerals, and maybe a couple of bingo games, I just used it as the funniest possible example of a public shitting story.

I still don't get how they can eff up Interleague Play schedules so badly every year. It's bad enough that it exists, the least they could do is attempt to balance it a little.

Once again, the Red Sox play a division in the other league....kinda. There are 6 IL series. Two are supposed to be against your "natural rivals" (read: excuse to get a Mets-Yankees series at both their stadiums every year). For the Red Sox, that "rivalry" has become so fuzzy, I don't even know if it exists any more. First it was the Braves. Then it was the half-Braves, half-Expos. Lately the Phillies have figured prominently, sometimes. This year it's half Phillies and half....nobody, I guess. So there are five more series. Four of those are against the division we're *supposed* to be playing, the NL Central. (Cubs and Brewers at home, Pirates and Astros away.) Then, for no reason, it's the Padres of the NL West. I can see having one less game against a division with a small number of teams--but the NL Central is the only one with six! Six teams, six series--yet we only play four of them, even without two dedicated to a fake rivalry!

Let's see who the Yanks have: Besides their two Mets series, it's Cubs, Reds, Brewers...and Rockies! Another west team thrown in in an NL Central year. So they only play three NL Central teams.

Rays: Marlins twice--those 2 have been warring for generations. Then, Brewers, Astros, Reds, Cards. Okay, in MLB's twisted world, this makes sense.

Orioles: They've got their two Nationals series, and then Pirates, Reds, Cards....and Braves! An east team thrown in.

Toronto: Are they picking out of a hat? A hat that's not labeled "NL Central" at all? Astros, Reds, Braves, Cards, Pirates, Phils.

Let me ask you something--if the 5 teams of the AL East are playing the 6 teams of the NL Central, and the Cubs only play 2 of their Interleague series against AL East teams, what the fuck division are the Cubs "playing"? Let's check out the Cubs' IL sked, because I'm quite curious: Red Sox, Yanks, White Sox, Royals, White Sox. Two east... three central!

So to recap:

Boston: E-1 C-4 W-1
NY: E-2 C-3 W-1
TB: E-2 C-4
BAL: E-2 C-3 W-1
TOR: E-1 C-4 W-1

What's the point? They really should pick out of a hat.

Also, I realize schedule making is hard. Maybe bring that old couple back. I don't know, maybe they initially said "we'll try to get each division to play a certain other division, no promises." Still, terrible job on this.


Sox/Braves, 1:05 p.m. today. First TV game is Friday night.

I went to a pizza place today, and as I walked out with my eggplant parm sandwich, I noticed a sticker on the door that read "Please Call Again." And it got me thinking about how older generations used to say "call" when they meant "appear at a place," which makes no sense. Like the way they'd say "you have a gentleman caller" or whatever. I thought, That's so weird--it's not like they're just calling on the phone, they actually showed up! So much more than a call.

But then I realized who the asshole was--me. Because why the hell should communicating with someone via audio only be referred to as a "call" anyway? Soon I realized that the phrase "telephone call" just means the telephone version of a call. (A call meaning a pop-in.)

So there's a case of my generation thinking they know what stuff means, without realizing that we were already one step behind.

It's kind of like the name "YouTube." Do you think any teenagers have any idea why the word "tube" would be used to indicate "something you watch"? We're already two steps removed from it. Televisions used to be made from cathode ray tubes, which is why we called TV "the tube" and/or "the boob tube." Little Justin or Emma (remember when that was your grandma's name?) might be aware of those terms, but even if they are, they probably don't know why they're used--Why would a flat screen be called a "tube"? So the odds of them connecting "tube" to "a television-like web site made by YOU!" are slimmer than their stupid jeans.

And forget about them knowing what the "bay" that "ebay" comes from is. Or what a hub for "stubs" is, now that nobody rips tickets anymore. Or where "pedia" comes from. Or what a physical book full of faces is. And on and on. I kind of like how the phrases live on anyway.

Lester, Aceves, Papelbon, Williams, Milton High's Rich Hill, Tony Pena's kid, and Fox combine on a four-hit shutout. We beat the Twins 5-zip.

My resolution is to not say "Minnesota Twins" as much as I did last month.

Red Sox vs. Minnesota Twins, 1:05 p.m.

Damn!